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Donny’s Late TOS Movie Era Interiors

Spent the weekend taking my sweet time getting the details right for the viewscreen and the ceiling structure of the Enterprise-A bridge. NOTE: lighting is very very WIP in the following shots



The viewscreen features a working digial clock and a screen-accurate display underneath the viewscreen, complete with a row of blinking light bulbs behind black plexiglass. ;)



The bridge dome is something I've always wanted to tackle. I analyzed the pattern on it and have gotten it screen-accurate to the best of my knowledge. It will have a simulated spinning red-alert beacon inside when I'm done with is, using the tech I employed for the TOS Enterprise's spinning nacelle domes.

 
Colour me wowed, Donny, great work.

Do you follow Doug Drexler on facebook? He was posting pics of the astrogator/ceiling dome over the weekend.

dJE
 
Colour me wowed, Donny, great work.

Do you follow Doug Drexler on facebook? He was posting pics of the astrogator/ceiling dome over the weekend.

dJE

That was from TMP. The Trek VI dome is different.
 
Lovely.

Where is the dedication plaque on the TUC bridge? I've seen people talking about it, but I haven't seen where it actually is.
 
Is that the same dimensions as the Ferengi control domes from TNG? Looks a bit familiar.
I’d thought the same too originally, but the pattern is most definitely different. If it’s the same size hemisphere I’m not quite sure, as I haven’t figured the size of the Ferengi dome, but they’re probably pretty close. The Ent-A dome I modeled is 2 feet in diameter, FYI.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the dome on the TUC bridge was repurposed from the TMP bridge dome, but this assumes it survived being taken off the set when they converted the TVH bridge into the TNG battle bridge and then found it's way back onto the TUC bridge years later. Or maybe it was just another plexiglass dome alltogether. Who knows?

The dome was not, in fact, installed on TFF bridge. The ceiling structure was really never visible in TFF, and I'm glad it wasn't, because it just looks odd without the dome to serve as the focal point for the structure.

 
The original dome has survived and is in private hands right now. It's much lower-profile than the Trek VI dome.

Doug Drexler

Mr. Drexler has posted about it recently on Facebook and gave this link:

http://www.paoloprevosto.com/web/project/star-trek-the-motion-picture-1979/
Excellent! My theory stands disproven. Thanks, @Scribble for clearing that up! (I admit I made my comment above without even taking a fresh look at the TMP bridge dome and realizing it indeed has a much lower profile)
 
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I have rarely rewatched the movies and had forgotten how dark and stark -- harsh, to me -- is the ENT-A . I wouldn’t enjoy living on it, I think.
 
Excellent! My theory stands disproven. Thanks, @Scribble for clearing that up! (I admit I made my comment above without even taking a fresh look at the TMP bridge dome and realizing it indeed has a much lower profile)

To be honest, I hadn't even realized that there was a bridge dome on the TUC bridge. As beautiful as that bridge is, stylistically, I'd kinda wrote it off (and the TFF bridge, as well) when they failed to use the TVH bridge. It didn't help matters when they spread those turbolifts so wide that they wouldn't fit in the bridge module shown onscreen. Well, I thought that there were far too many mistakes and silly gags in those two movies, overall, for me to truly enjoy them.

But again, the bridge looks beautiful and would work as just about any other ship's bridge. And, of course, your model seems to be a faithful representation of it, as usual. ;)

Looking at that latest image posted of Shatner, I didn't realize that so much of the TMP bridge survived into TFF and TUC. I knew about the turbolift alcoves but didn't know about the upper domes and lighting panels. That center section and ribs are just so...plain...in comparison to the TMP-TSFS bridge's. I love the color changes from the TFF to the TUC bridge, though.
 
To be honest, I hadn't even realized that there was a bridge dome on the TUC bridge. As beautiful as that bridge is, stylistically, I'd kinda wrote it off (and the TFF bridge, as well) when they failed to use the TVH bridge. It didn't help matters when they spread those turbolifts so wide that they wouldn't fit in the bridge module shown onscreen. Well, I thought that there were far too many mistakes and silly gags in those two movies, overall, for me to truly enjoy them.

But again, the bridge looks beautiful and would work as just about any other ship's bridge. And, of course, your model seems to be a faithful representation of it, as usual. ;)

Looking at that latest image posted of Shatner, I didn't realize that so much of the TMP bridge survived into TFF and TUC. I knew about the turbolift alcoves but didn't know about the upper domes and lighting panels. That center section and ribs are just so...plain...in comparison to the TMP-TSFS bridge's. I love the color changes from the TFF to the TUC bridge, though.
I imagine they abandoned the TMP-TVH bridge ceiling structure because of how hard that bridge was to light with that structure up there. In "The Making of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", Nick Meyer complains a good bit about how difficult it was for the lighting crew to drop lights down through the various arms of the stucture and how it significantly added time to simple lighting changes. I imagine Robert Wise had similar problems.

It seems that when they were designing the TFF bridge, they wanted to go with something simpler. Indeed, there are behind the scenes photos where the large light panels are removed and you can see stage lights hanging down. I also surmise that it's lack of detail may be due to budgetary or time constraints, but I'm at least glad they added the dome with the spinning red alert beacon inside for TUC.
 
If they'd done what the did on the TMP ribs (stylistically, not number), it wouldn't be so plain, but I do get budget constraints.
 
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